The 2017 Oscars Best Picture Fiasco Is Ready for Its Close-up

Nobody wants to see this sequel. A year ago, the worst mix-up in Oscars history transpired during the final and most important Academy Award of the ceremony. Presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway were given the wrong envelope for the best picture winner and erroneously announced that La La Land won instead of Moonlight. Telecast producers still likely have nightmares about the sight of the presumed winner and La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz announcing on stage, “There’s a mistake, Moonlight, you guys won best picture… this is not a joke!”

So on the eve of a hopefully more successful Oscars awards show, The Hollywood Reporter compiled an oral history from 29 of the people directly involved. The result is an eye-opening account of all the little things that went wrong to lead to such a big miscue.

For example, there were warning signs involving the “balloting leaders” from PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that oversees the Oscars, whose job was to hand the correct envelopes to the presenters. “Sometime that week, my department had told PwC’s PR department that Brian (Cullinan) was not allowed to do any social media backstage because he was very engaged with social media during the week leading up to the show,” said Academy publicity managing director Teni Melidonian. (Tweeting pictures backstage from the show is believed to have distracted Cullinan from his duties.)

Or the disaster that served as a distraction just before the ceremony started: “On Sunday morning, our three art deco tower set pieces fell down,” recalled telecast producer Jennifer Todd. “It sounded like somebody set a bomb off. We had to bring in 60 stagehands to repair everything before the show. We had to push the opening of the theater — they usually open the doors at 4 p.m., but we didn’t open them until 4:45. And we never got to rehearse the back half of the show.”

No rehearsal could have prepared them for this chaos. A stagehand frantically ran on stage to stop Horowitz from his acceptance speech amid the backstage scramble after the accounting firm alerted producers and crew that the wrong film title had been read by the presenters. “As I stepped back, I noticed that somebody with a headset was running onto the stage, and you could just feel something starting to turn,” said Horowitz.

As the drama unfolded on the stage, host Jimmy Kimmel had been sitting in the audience next to Matt Damon, preparing to end the show with a planned comedy bit with his friend. “I said to Matt, ‘What’s happening up there?’ He said, ‘I think they announced the wrong winner.’ I started laughing because that was ridiculous.”

“I remember the Oscar being really heavy,” summed up Horowitz. “In the moment when I realized we hadn’t won, I remember it got even heavier. And then I remember handing it to Barry.”